Zac Nelson – “Let This Unravel” Music Video (Premiere)

In the new music video for “Let This Unravel”, NYC director Jordan Levie takes a literal cue — “Let this unravel” — and translates it visually, into a seemingly endless spool of yarn which unwinds against an urban backdrop. Yarn has its own modern day significance in creation and craft, but what this visual cue heralds, perhaps unwittingly, is that listening to the music of Zac Nelson is like entering into a global universe of color, where influences are culled from everywhere.

This unraveling spool of yarn brings to mind the weaving loom, which cultures from around the world have utilized for thousands and thousand of years, often turning such materials into dizzying geometric textiles. These textiles, popularly disseminated this day and age from travels to Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia, adorn everyday objects with colors and patterns that we often today associate with the psychedelic — and likewise is the music of Zac Nelson, which allows one to slip in and out of minor psychedelic states under the guise of “pop music”, demented as that interpretation of pop music might be.

With the assistance of ALAK and Biosexual — who we also love, Zac Nelson’s latest album, New Once, is a melting pot of the playful and dynamic, rich with multi-faceted percussion, vocal dissonances, and oh so many layers to unravel. Maybe I’m reading too much into a music video about an spool of yarn — or maybe the hard-to-put-your-finger-on vibe of Zac Nelson’s music just inspires these crazy thoughts. Whatever the reason, New Once drops digitally TODAY and at the end of this month in physical formats, and you should very much give it a listen.

The Holydrug Couple

Moonlust, the latest record from Chilean musicians The Holydrug Couple, is a bit like gazing at the moon while a soundtrack of longing plays within, the big bright orb in the sky pulling at the feel-good heartstrings of nostalgia even when you’re riddled with pain.

Ives describes the lyrical themes of the record, which are centered around “feeling lust, desire, for something that you see when it’s dark but it’s so far away that it’s unreachable. It’s an unrealistic target, like God, maybe, or a dream archetype of a goddess. It’s the feeling of melancholy that you can’t fulfill with anything.” Yes, it’s dark, but the duo of Ives and Manu make the dark sound damn good. Enjoy three tracks below.

Michael Rault – “Lovers Lie”

With the juxtaposition of bittersweet lyrics and cheery melodies, Michael Rault’s “Lovers Lie” is a slow flutter, like a ’50s slow dance prior to a breakup. The Toronto-based singer-songwriter graces us with his dynamic excellence via his latest album, Living Daylight, which is out now via the prolific So-Cal label Burger Records. Love.

Seance Crasher – “Commitment” (Music Video Premiere)

While we don’t often post music videos that are quite so silly, Seance Crasher’s “Commitment” is an exception, thanks to the strength of the track itself. The recording alias of Kevin Rafn — who is also backed by his older brother Daniel Rafn (read more about Daniel at the bottom of this post), Seance Crasher continues with the nostalgic sentiments first stirred up by Michael Rault. For full disclosure, I will note that this music video was filmed in my old house, thus making the nostalgia even stronger, but this type of humor holds in line with Seance Crasher’s bouncy, light-hearted approach to their music and their live show (which is damn enjoyable if you happen to get a chance to witness one).

“The music video was filmed last summer. It is a simple story about a typical boy/girl relationship turned on it’s head when the boyfriend suddenly and quite inexplicably turns into a dog. He then gets to enjoy all the finery he was accustomed to as a man, only now his lady walks him around on a leash like the animal he is. The video was filmed on a budget of $80.00 and most items were returned to the Dollar Tree after filming.” – Kevin Rafn, Seance Crasher

This music video is seeing the light of day alongside the EP release of City Bus, which you can hear here. The video serves as a prelude to another full-length record which will come out later this summer, as a follow-up to their recently released sophomore record, Piano Pills.

Daniel Rafn (Arthur Russell Covers)

To close out this edition of TOP POPS!, we strip away 1/2 of Seance Crasher’s brotherly appeal and throw in some ever-inspiring Arthur Russell, via Daniel Rafn’s solo project. These covers of Russell’s “Place I Know / Kid Like You” and “You & Me Both” — from World of Echo and Calling Out of Context, respectively, pay ample homage to Russell’s more off-kilter experiments in the discoteque universe. For that, we can be thankful for these reboots.

Lost Lander – “Give It Time” (Royal Canoe Remix)

Portland’s Lost Lander are just about to embark on a nationwide tour with hometown indie rock mates The Helio Sequence, and what a pleasure for us to premiere this remix of “Give It Time”, which has been expertly re-imagined by our long-time favorites, Royal Canoe! “Give It Time” comes from Lost Lander’s latest full-length, Medallion, which is out now. In perfect conjunction with tonight’s Full Moon in Sagittarius, which symbolically calls for expansion and big-picture thinking, this track hints towards the maturity required to allow for the patient unfolding of the come what may. And this philosophical high-mindedness doesn’t stop at just this track, either. The press release for Medallion sums up Lost Lander’s continued deep-thinking:

“If DRRT, the group’s first independently released album, was about the confluence of nature and technology, Medallion, its latest, concerns dualities – experiences of love and loss, impermanence and longevity, death and rebirth. Medallion is all about wrenching joy from despair, of finding the permanent within the temporary.”

And for good additional measure, here’s “Gemini”, another track from Medallion — for it’s Gemini season right now, and it happens to be the opposite sign of Sagittarius.

Gacha featuring Natalie TBA Beridze

Gacha’s Send Two Sunsets came out last month on Apollo Records, and this title track, featuring Natalie TBA Beridze, may be the most New Age-inspired and feel-good of them all. It reminds one of a cascading journey into infinity, like a rainforest mist falling down all around you. Yes, indeed, it borders on cheesy… but this type of calm offers a pleasant reprieve from the busy days which abound.

And a couple additional tracks featuring Beridze, including a Djrum remix!

Hypnotic new tracks from Stellar OM Source's latest RVNG Intl release, Nite-Glo, plus a track premiere for "Big Metal" by Portland's HITS (featuring members of the now-defunct Explode Into Colors and !!!, who crafted their record at Andrea Zittel's A-Z West compound in Joshua Tree.

HITS – “Big Metal” (Track Premiere)

Those in the Pacific Northwest may have remembered a glorious time in the past when locals were lucky enough to enjoy the percussion-heavy dance music of Explode Into Colors, a three-lady powerhouse of sound. Since then, its members have never really quite gone away, popping up here and again in Portland with drum circles, fashion shows, and interdisciplinary art projects galore. With HITS, these busy ladies get even busier, as Lisa Schonberg and Heather Treadway — two-thirds of the former Explode Into Colors crew — team up with !!! founding member Allan Wilson, to create their latest record, Sunshine Baby.

The product of a month-long residency at artist Andrea Zittel’s A-Z West compound in Joshua Tree, Sunshine Baby is as meditative and hypnotic as anything you’d expect to grow out of so much time spent banging on drums, likely around campfires, in the middle of the California desert… which is certainly not to say that the record sounds like a hippie free-form jam out, either. The project’s sound design, initially designed to be performed in a multi-channel environment, is much more deliberate and sculpted — but still manages to encourage the same kind of loose-limbed nature worship any hippie jam out would be on board with.

Sunshine Baby comes out May 26th on Crash Symbols, and it can be pre-ordered HERE. HITS will be touring this summer in support of the album, beginning with a release show on May 21st at the Women’s Center for Creative Work in LA.

HITS at their month-long residency in Joshua Tree. According to their press release, “To realize the sound pieces in a performance context, the band employed a multi-channel speaker array designed by Wilson, and donned gowns designed and crafted by Treadway with dyes inspired by desert soils and plants.”

Stellar OM Source – “Sudden”

Blasting off into hyperspace comes the intro track to Stellar OM Source’s latest record on RVNG Intl, Nite-Glo. With this four-track EP, French electronic producer Christelle Gauldi expresses her personal need for catharsis by channeling the confusion and transience of a challenging time into dance music with a trance-inducing quality at its core, thus staying true to her name and M.O. True — much of this type of music can be considered trance-inducing due to its repetitive nature, but with Stellar OM Source, imbued intention seems key.

Nite-Glo will be released on June 8th in the UK and June 9th in the U.S., digitally and on 12″ EP.

“Nite-Glo continues an off-script musical journey informed by Gualdi’s formal training in electro-acoustic composition at the Conservatoire de Paris and an ascent from the DIY synth scene of the mid-aughts to a global dancefloor. Rewarding listeners keen on conscious listening, the passages of Nite-Glo crystalize as tracks unfurl and sequences reveal an absolute power over time.” – RVNG Intl. Press Release

Portland electronic artist Contact Cult gets some meditative analog video treatment from artist Ritzy Sheens, plus Israeli improvisational band We Are Ghosts show what it's like to jam out in the desert.

We Are Ghosts

Hailing from Israel comes We Are Ghosts, an experimental and mostly-instrumental collective that “brings together musicians to create a one-time adventurous encounter that can not be reconstructed.”

Guided by principles of restriction-free improvisation, their latest release, A N D A R T A, was recorded live in the Negev desert of Southern Israel in Fall of 2014, and is an amazing document of restraint, especially considering that it is a ten-person collaboration, involving instruments as diverse as the iPad, glockenspiel, banjo, and klingandhum. On the opening track, “Yahalom Shachor”, one can really sense the view of a desert at sunset, as the vocals of Shany Kedar carry the strings and percussion far off into the skies. You can now purchase the whole record on Bandcamp for a mere $5, and help support Israeli label Schwartz Neon Licht Music in the process.

Contact Cult – “Ascetic Phase” Music Video (Premiere)

Heavy with monkish connotations, the album opener for Contact Cult’s Hylozoist is “Ascetic Phase”, a meditative track inspired by the chaotic intersections of will, faith, and desire, as well as Steve Reich’s piece, “Phasing Pianos”. The track’s gradual descent into guitar and noise-driven chaos is given color by analog video wizard Ritzy Sheens, who made this entire video with the LZX modular video synth and the Audio Damage Sequencer 1. From start to end, one is invited to follow an all-seeing eye through various states of expansion, contraction, and manipulated pattern, easily becoming lost in the streams of pixely detail.

Hylozoist is the debut release from Portland electronic musician Contact Cult, and can be purchased now via Translinguistic Other. Stream the whole record below.

Shameboy (ft. Max Marshall) – “Trippin”

When I first came across the young UK producer duo Bondax, I knew instantly that they were musicians to pay attention to. With his first release since 2010, Shameboy, aka Belgian producer Luuk Cox, has crafted a noteworthy single that gives me a similar sense of promise. Featuring vocals from Max Marshall, “Trippin” is a soothing slow-burner that demands repeat listens and provides a brilliant backbone for what can only imagine are a slew of incoming dancefloor-ready remixes. If this is Cox’s first release in five years, I imagine there are some other exciting things that he’s sleeping on.

XUXA Santamaria – “BELSHAZZAR” Track & Video Premiere

Oakland, California’ XUXA Santamaria first entered our field of vision in early 2014, when we were researching for our epic feature on bi-lingual English and Spanish-speaking musicians (which is a bi-lingual article itself, mind you). Well, they’ve caught our attention again. Since the post-SXSW week of March 23rd, the duo of Sofía Córdova and Matt Kirkland have been releasing a track a week from their latest six-track mixtape, BILLIONAIR RAINBOW, which is a meditation on money and power, and the duo’s relationship to them.

How appropriate for REDEFINE that the video we get to premiere is one which references and samples from Kenneth Anger’s retelling of the 1916 DW Griffith film, Intolerance. Says Córdova about the video for “Belshazzar”, a track which is named after the last king of Babylon:

“In keeping with the theme of money and power, I was particularly interested by the making of Intolerance which is one of the costliest movie productions of its time… The song is indeed meta with the chorus roughly translating to ‘Action! Action! Action! Shouted the Director, Action! Action! Action! He who did not free us’ as a play on both the power of the director and also, in tying it to the themes of the mixtape, the power of ‘the man in charge’. Belshazzar was the last king of Babylon (which is of course, shorthands as excess in all sorts of contexts). The Persians bring war to him, as evidenced in the film) and so he and his universe presented a perfect metaphoric bubble to flesh out the disparities of power, influence and money: he is having these lavish parties that are built on the backs of slaves and that being destroyed in a violent act; the director is building this insane production which is built on the back of extras. That said, we’re not a band to be too literal so here are the lyrics translated. It’s a bit more magical realism and super meta (the already meta world of movies layered on top of a historical narrative).”

Kirkland adds some commentary on the track and record, more generally:

“Obviously, like most people, we’re deeply conflicted about our place inside these systems — both raging against their injustices and feeling trapped and powerless while simultaneously feeling their allure and reveling some aspects of those same systems… We obviously aren’t interested in being didactic about these themes, but they’re present in all of the lyrics…

“[‘Belshazzar’ is] basically like a dream vision of the excess and splendor of early hollywood, sung from the viewpoint of an extra on the movie set but also flashing on the ancient Babylon that the set is replicating. The scene becomes a strange simulacrum of the world that it is fictionalizing: the director as a king and the extras as slaves, the king’s palace in babylon mirrored by a lavishly built wooden replica, the landscape of Babylon at the dawn of civilization recreated in the desert outside of Los Angeles. The track has a gauzy, psychedelic blur to it, to underline that rather than being a straight narrative, it’s more of a dreamlike floating view of this strange moment; imagine the chorus being sung by a chorus of extras, who are walking further and further away at the end of the song as our viewpoint floats up and away from the action.”

More details are on the band’s website, and you can download the MP3 for free below!

Rebeka – “With Tears We Cry” & “Fail” & “Breath”

Polish musicians Rebeka know how to balance soulful vocals with percussive experimentation and just a general sense of restrained madness. These three tracks come from their latest EP, Breath, and all tread the line between mainstream and indie while showing off the band’s shape-shifting abilities. (You can also watch the video for “Breath” here.)

Spectral Hypnosis is a recurring series, featuring mesmerizing songs for one to lose sense of time and space, mind and body. This installment features a track premiere from the collaborative Archival Feedback "call and response" experiment, as well as a track from Chile's Follakzoid.

Föllakzoid – “Electronic” (Sacred Bones)

To continue with the explorations of landscape comes some groovy, sand dune-traversing sounds from Chilean psychedelic band Föllakzoid. “Electronic”, the premiere track from their creatively-titled third album, III, is nearly twelve minutes long but could probably extend for triple that duration and never languish. This is the art of repetition in its finest jam-out mellow best, full of analog beauty within club music songwriting structures. Held within in a mystic wuality perhaps described best by the band itself, who state: “We work in a very similar structure to mantric songs or techno, we share a metric language there that coordinates the musical language. There are many layers in our music, most of them unknown even to us”.

Archival Feedback (Other Electricities – Track Premiere)

Outside of some of the huge art events and festivals which take place in Florida (Art Basel and ULTRA come to mind), Florida’s musical scene seems a relatively elusive entity — but it is certainly not without high-concept projects worth paying attention to. One of this lies in Archival Feedback, the latest project by Emile Milgrim and T. Wheeler Castillo, which collaboratively creates an environment for interdisciplinary dialogue, “stemming from an attempt to document the ever-changing landscape of South Florida.”

The project centers around field recordings (“calls”) collected by Milgrim and Wheeler Castillo between 2012-14 with corresponding “responses” composed by selected artists utilizing these recordings, all mastered by Rat Bastard at Dan Hosker Studio in Miami Beach. A collection of prints, authored and printed by Milgrim and Wheeler Castillo at Turn-Based Press in Miami, informs the listening, references history and reacts to the landscape.

Today, we premiere io.ko’s ebbing and flowing track, “the worst drummer in little haiti”, which Wheeler Castillo says best encompasses the record’s explorations of “landscape as a place and a field of research.” The two tracks below, when offered side-by-side, give the full picture of the call-and-response structure of the release.

Amassing rare and forgotten music is a peculiar sort of hobby — one that slowly transforms into an addiction. It’s not that I don’t love mainstream music. It’s just that the thrill of listening to some forgotten gem that everybody else has overlooked is powerful. It also feeds into the collector’s impulse I have to...

Amassing rare and forgotten music is a peculiar sort of hobby — one that slowly transforms into an addiction. It’s not that I don’t love mainstream music. It’s just that the thrill of listening to some forgotten gem that everybody else has overlooked is powerful. It also feeds into the collector’s impulse I have to overturn every stone to find that song, and my love of complete collections. Not surprisingly, I also like to collect comic books. I guess I’m the type. In any event, here are five lesser-known musicians that I believe everybody should give a listen to, dating as far back as the 1920s and focusing on jazz, folk, and blues.

Bob Wills

I think of Bob Wills as Americana at its finest. The style of Western swing that Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys played combined early country music, blues songs, American Dixieland, and even some of the French gypsy swing of Django Reinhardt into something very distinct. Born in 1905 to a poor rural white family, Wills spent most of his childhood living amongst African-Americans, to whom he attributed his lifelong interest in blues music. Wills ended up in Fort Worth in the ‘20s and eventually fronted the Light Crust Doughboys, a band sponsored by the Burrus Mill Flour Company. Fronting his own band, Wills and his men starting taking old standards and rearranging to make them into dance songs. Almost by accident, Wills hired a trumpeter and saxophonist, and Wills’ band then found its sound. He was extraordinarily popular into the 1950s, and while his fame diminished somewhat, he remained very influential in the development of country music.1

The Bob Wills Band was in effect two bands, one which played swing band music and one which played fiddle tunes. Bob Will’s cover of “Basin Street” is one of my favorite songs, and it illustrates why the Bob Wills band was so brilliant, taking a Dixieland jazz song and making it their own. “Blue Yodel No. 1” is another fantastic Bob Wills song, but instead of covering a jazz song, Wills covers Jimmie Rodgers’ most famous song and makes it his own. “Ida Red” is an older fiddle tune Wills recorded in 1938 and that was later adapted into one of Chuck Berry’s first hits, “Maybellene.”

Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys – “Basin Street Blues”

Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys – “Blue Yodel No. 1”

Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys – “Ida Red”

Big Mama Thornton

The superficial summary of Big Mama Thornton’s life is that she popularized “Hound Dog,” and when Elvis Presley covered the song, he was catapulted into stardom. The problem with this version is that it basically reduces her to a footnote, when Thornton is at least as interesting as Elvis. Born Willie Mae Thornton in 1926, she jumped into the burgeoning Rhythm and Blues scene in 1948. Thornton’s singing was aggressive for a female blues singer, replete with growls and snarls, which helped her to stand out in a field dominated by men. The fact that Thornton dressed in men’s clothing helped to fuel rumors around her sexuality. Her recordings faded in popularity among African-American audiences but grew among white audiences, and she continued to perform until she died from complications of alcoholism in 1984. Like many blues singers of her generation, Thornton received only minimal royalties for her songs.2

“Hound Dog” is Thornton’s signature song, and I would be remiss if I didn’t include it here. Don’t get me wrong; Elvis Presley’s version is good, but Thornton’s will blast the windows out of your house if you’re careless. “Rock Me Baby” is a song from the later period of her career, and it may sound similar to a later adaptation of an old song by Old Crow Medicine Show. “Ball and Chain” is another classic that was eventually covered by Janis Joplin in 1968.

Big Mama Thornton – “Hound Dog”

Big Mama Thornton – “Ball N Chain”

Big Mama Thornton – “Hound Dog”

Vashti Bunyan

Vashti Bunyan is sometimes described as the Linda Perhacs of Great Britain. Both women recorded a single psychedelic folk album that sold poorly and then disappeared into obscurity for over thirty years.

Born in England, Bunyan recorded a few singles in 1965 and then Just Another Diamond Day in 1970. The album was written while Bunyan traveled around Scotland, searching for an artist’s commune; some have speculated that this inspired the album’s pastoral imagery. Unfortunately, while the album was well-received, it sold poorly, and she stopped making music. While Bunyan was unaware of her burgeoning fame, her album became a sought-after collector’s item. After she became aware of the surge of popular interest, she recorded an album in 2005, Lookaftering, and a final album in 2014, Heartleap.3

As Just Another Diamond Day was such an important and influential album that I’ll just be listing some songs from it. What I like about Bunyan’s sound, apart from her incredible vocals, is the psychedelia. Her songs feel like Donovan songs, but with a touch more strangeness. The title song “Just Another Diamond Day” has to be included here, and not just because it’s the title track. There are a handful of songs I like to wake up and listen to, and it’s one of them. “Rose Hip November” is another solid song — one that always puts me in a wandering kind of mood. I also like “Timothy Grub,” as it has a rougher feel from the rest of the album.

Vashti Bunyan – “Just Another Diamond Day”

Vashti Bunyan – “Rose Hip November”

Vashti Bunyan – “Timothy Grub”

Robert Pete Williams

John Fahey referred to Robert Pete Williams as “the strangest person I have ever met,” which is all the more powerful if we keep in mind Fahey’s numerous eccentricities.4 Born to sharecroppers in Louisiana in 1914, Williams got his start playing in shows in the Baton Rouge area. In 1956, he shot and killed a man in a bar, for which he received a life sentence in Angola State Prison. But while in prison, he was discovered by a musicologist named Harry Oster who successfully lobbied for Williams’ pardon in 1959. Williams began recording at the moment the blues revival was in earnest, and he made a name for himself playing in coffeehouses as well as gigs in Europe. His recording and performing schedule declined as he grew older, and he died in 1980.

Williams’ sound is very unusual, partly because he constantly improvised while playing, and partly because his tunings were unorthodox. Consequently, he doesn’t sound like very many other blues musicians. “My Daddy Was a Hoodoo Man” is a great example of a Williams song that doesn’t really sound like any other song; its opening notes sound like they’re almost out of tune. “Cows Like Music” is a weird sort of song, recoded live and with a lot of banter between the audience and Williams. You get a good sense of what Williams was like as a performer. Lastly, “Matchbox Blues” showcases Williams’ fingerpicking and musicianship on a blues standard.5

Robert Pete Williams – “My Daddy Was A Hoodoo Man”

Robert Pete Williams – “Cows Like Music”

Robert Pete Williams – “Matchbox Blues”

Bud Freeman

Bud Freeman is one of the earliest tenor saxophone players in jazz, and he’s largely unknown to casual listeners today. Born in 1906, Freeman got his start in what was later known as the Austin High School Gang, a group of white high school students who became leading proponents of the Chicago Style. The Chicago Style replaced tubas with string basses and banjos with guitars, still part of contemporary instrumentation.

Freeman moved to New York in 1927 and played in a variety of swing orchestras, including Benny Goodman’s and Tommy Dorsey’s. He occasionally fronted groups of his own after the war while playing with his old friends, still in the interwar style he helped to popularize. He died in 1991 at the age of eighty-five.6

Freeman’s style combined some elements of Dixieland jazz as well as swing. Freeman’s solos were known for their length, which gave him his nickname of “the eel,” yet he also had a very consistently mellow style playing in the middle register of the tenor sax. His speed had some of the frantic feel of city life, but Freeman sounded as though he was the master of that pace. “Easy to Get” is one of my favorite Freeman songs and is a good vehicle for him to showcase his solo work. Freeman’s solo on “The Eel” earned him the same nickname and features solid work from Eddie Condon’s group. “It Had to Be You” is from a postwar recording session and shows Freeman’s work later in life.

Brownish Black – “Life Lessons” Track Premiere

Get ready for some shoulder-shrugging action with “Life Lessons”, the new track from Portland soul band Brownish Black. At eight members strong, Brownish Black’s major forte lies in their ability to throw down some major playful vibes — and when paired with harmonies by Mz. V, lead singer M.D. Sharbatz’s vocals and persona are a sweaty, flailing reminder that dancing can be the most rewarding kind of workout. Life Lessons comes out in June on Portland-based label Breakup Records. Catch them May 15th at Star Theater, and check out their new website at www.brownishblack.com.

Monophonics – “Lying Eyes”

Next, we head down the West Coast to the Bay Area, where local mainstays Monophonics bring us the swirling momentum of their latest track, “Lying Eyes”. Combining a Tame Impala-esque psychedelic haziness with the in-your-face style of classic vocalists, Monophonics could easily lie back idle on their rock band foundations, but manage to stir up curiosities with tasty little morsels of organ and horn. Their full-length, Sound of Sinning, comes out April 14th on Transistor Sound.

Lili K – “Tommy”

Hailing from Chicago, Lili K offers neo-soul at its throwback best. “Tommy” is a simple pleasure which comes from her upcoming record, Ruby, which will be released through Freshly Bkd Records on April 21st. You can also view the retro-inspired music video, which seems quite the adequate backwards look at her hometown.

Kelela – “A Message” Music Video

Kelela readies herself for her upcoming HALLUCINOGEN EP, which drops this May. Directed by Daniel Sannwald, this music video for “A Message” starts out a bit like a FKA Twigs homage before it becomes reminiscent of SBTRKT’s last album cover — but worry not: it ends in an explosion into far-out interstellar anime territory, where melting and oozing are the name of the game. “A Message” comes from a 6-song demo created with the Venezuelan producer Arca, which explores light and darkness and love and sexuality.

One has to love a good concept behind a piece, and the summaries of the cyclical nature of the EP (and of life itself) can be summarized by the following abtractions:

a message: rejection and amputation
gomenasai: domination and empowerment
swoop: feral lust and longing
all the way down: rebirth and recovery
hallucinogen: delirium and ecstasy
the high: the payoff
[REPEAT]

Force Publique – “Hopeless”
Track Premiere

The premiere single from Force Publique’s 6-song cassette, Bloom, “Hopeless” has one foot in atmospheric ’90s trip-hop and one in the modern synth world. It’s immediately apparent that Force Publique know what it is to be dramatic in their delivery, but their dynamism only really becomes apparent after the memorable swirling synth line takes over and as the noisy, distorted ambiance is allowed space to bubble through.

Catch the Portland-via-Denver male-female duo of James Wayne and Cassie Graves at The Boreal in Eugene on March 27th, with Pastel Ghost from Oakland and Nightspace from Seattle. A west coast tour is forthcoming later this year, and damn, that’s a sexy album cover.

Tei Shi – Verde EP

Um, not to brag, but — Tei Shi is one of those artists we’ve had our eyes on since she first hit the scene with her self-titled 2013 EP, Saudade. My, has she matured since then. With every new single, she asserts more and more her role as a dominant one-woman powerhouse, causing eyes both male and female to flutter towards her with adoration. “Bassically” comes from her April 14th release of her Verde EP, out on Mom + Pop and Arts & Crafts.

Catch her at upcoming SXSW shows as well as upcoming high-five-exchanging tour dates with our other favorites, Shy Girls. All of these things will be celebrated below in this post, where you can also catch Val’s guest-spot on a recent Shy Girls track, and a performance of Beyonce’s “No Angel” from our SXSW party last year. Don’t miss her — and get your ass out to our 2015 SXSW party, DREAMFORCE.

Oko Tygra – Glass Jaw / Plasticine 7″

Featured here are the two tracks from the Denver four-piece Oko Tygra’s latest 7″. As it creeps up like a slow burn, “Glass Jaw” is a prime example of the band’s blissful use of restraint, and “Plasticine” gets better and better with every listen. As with most dream pop, the idea is not necessarily to blow minds here — and the band readily references Slow Dive and Cocteau Twins as influences — but just like those artists, it is a feel, a mood immemorial, which one sometimes just can’t help but turn to for mellowed out satisfaction.